Environment: Egypt Battles a Sleeping Devil

The striking images are among the finest surviving examples of ancient Egyptian art. They depict the passage into the next life of a slim young woman clad in a diaphanous gown, her toenails polished white, her eyes outlined with kohl, her every need seen to by the servants and deities surrounding her. The accompanying inscriptions leave no doubt about her identity: Queen Nefertari, the favorite wife of Ramses II, Egypt's greatest pharaoh.

Covering the ceilings and walls of the queen's tomb in the royal necropolis -- a honeycomb of chambers carved into the limestone mountains at Thebes -- the paintings have been sheltered from the fierce winds and scorching heat of the middle Nile Valley. Indeed, some of the bright-hued images are as vivid today as when they were first daubed onto the plastered interior of the tomb more than 3,000 years ago. But though the colors are still brilliant, the plaster underneath is deteriorating. Nearly a third of the paintings have already flaked off. The plaster behind others is loosening from the walls, and only strips of gauze hold some of the slabs in place.

The sorry state of Nefertari's tomb is typical of the condition of many of the most important monuments of Egyptian antiquity. Some of the pillars and stones of Memphis, a capital of ancient Egypt, are standing in pools of water. Reliefs carved in the sandstone walls of the temples of Luxor and Karnak are eroding, and some of the stones are stained. Chunks of plaster are falling off the walls of the temple at Abydos, an ancient religious center.

Egyptologists the world over are alarmed at the pace of the decay. Says Lanny Bell, director of Chicago House, the field project at Luxor established by the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute: "In 200 years, many of the reliefs, which are really the significant part of these temples, will be gone. There will be only blank walls and columns left."

Egyptian authorities are only too aware of the perils facing their greatest treasures, but they have been hamstrung by lack of resources. As recently as four years ago, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization's annual budget was a mere $2 million. But since the EAO's energetic director, Ahmed Qadry, a 54- year-old Egyptologist, took over in December 1981, the budget, swelled in part by increases in museum entrance fees and from tours of antiquities, has grown dramatically; this year it is $16 million. Says Qadry: "The quantity of restoration done in the past three years has been hundreds of times the work that took place in the past."

Most of the crumbling monuments are victims of a troublesome combination: salt in the building stone and moisture from the ground and air. Says Salah Ahmed Salah, an expert on the preservation of stone at Cairo University: "Salt crystals are like a sleeping devil. Only when you add moisture do they start to act." The water penetrates the stone, dissolves the salt and in the form of a saline solution migrates back toward the surface. There the moisture evaporates, leaving behind the salts, which recrystallize, forcing apart the grains of stone. The result is a flaking and crumbling surface. In Nefertari's tomb, says Bell, "salt has just bubbled up and pushed the plaster off the walls."